A Long History of Nearly Everything: or, Andrea's Big Theory

In environmental science, there is a concept of predator-prey relationships called the Trophic Pyramid which shows graphically the size relationships between plant communities, herbivore communities, omnivore communities, and carnivore communities.

Pretty, huh? And not even complicated, though "trophic pyramid" might have thrown you off a bit. Basically, you need ten times as many plants as herbivores, and ten times as many herbivores as carnivores (by weight) in order to sustain each population or trophic level. It's because of the inefficiency of energy transfer involved in eating (not that you care): Most of the energy content of whatever is eaten passes through undigested, and so to sustain a population of carnivores you need a lot of herbivores, and a LOT of plants. That's why there are herds of gazelles for every pride of lions. (It's also why it's so easy to drive high-order carnivores into extinction.)

I've been uncomfortably aware since my teens that North America and much of industrialized western society sits perched atop a global trophic economic pyramid in which we are the large carnivores, and most of the world's six-and-a-half billion human beings are herds of tasty herbivores. That global economy chews through their health, their lives, their social structures, their native natural resources, their children, their potential, and turns it in the most inefficient process possible into the energy necessary to sustain our consumerist 'democratic' paradise. We eat them.

Then we claim that our wealth and our accomplishments are the result of our human rights, our wonderful democratic political systems. Which is certainly a contributing factor to the internal redistribution of wealth within the borders of our own countries, but come on. Who actually believes that without massive global transfers of wealth from poor countries to rich ones that we could put on these smug superior airs and prance around in extensive wardrobes drinking expensive coffees and driving expensive cars?

Did you know that poor countries pay more to rich countries every year in interest payments alone than they receive in transfers and loans combined?

Where would our Hallowe'en rituals be without the child slave trade that underpins cheap chocolate production?

Where would our walk-in closets be if teenaged girls in poor countries weren't working 80 hour weeks at sewing machines (overtime unpaid), wearing diapers because they're not allowed to take bathroom breaks, and fired if they get married or pregnant, to make cheap clothes for our shopping malls?

Where would Christmas be if Disney didn't hire international child labour under much the same conditions to make its toys?

The environment--the biophysical environment--needs carnivores, though it's a point of view I doubt many herbivores would appreciate. Flesh-eaters perform important ecological functions. I can't say the same for the economic carnivores, for you and I. And if we're bound and determined to be a pride of lions, as it seems many government and business leaders believe, the least we can do is not berate the gazelles for lacking claws and fangs. The least we can do is admit that we chase them down, sever their jugular veins, and devour them raw.

This is not something that makes me feel good about myself (nor should it). It would not be an exaggeration to state that most of my work-related and extracurricular decisions are based on my desire to undo the damage that just living in Canada does. I can't, and that's the kicker. No matter what I do, what choices I make, just going about my everyday overfed, overhoused, overclothed, overwarmed life will cost the earth more than I can repay. In Canada, each of us uses approximately four times the resources that we should.

That is to say that the biophysical environment and social justice principles could equitably allow us each to use the resources of almost two hectares, and we Canadians use eight. Four times our fair share of the world's natural resources, and the human labour (often forced, almost always underpaid) required to mine and harvest and process and package and ship it. Using some fancy online calculators I found that the only way I could reduce my use of global resources to almost-two hectares would be to live in a 300 square-foot house without running water, give up meat, never fly and walk to work.

Here's the tool I used. Try and see for yourself what changes you would have to make to use only your fair share.

All of which is a preamble (see? I told you this would be long) to what I actually do, social-justice-wise, and why it never ever ever feels like enough:

I work full time as a professional treehugger, saving itty bitty patches of land from overly destructive development. And just think of a few more caveats to pack in there yourself. It's important work but most of the time it's frustratingly ineffective.

I edit a webzine.

I recycle and compost (the last refuge of environmental scoundrels).

I read a lot of nonfiction about these issues.

I buy the minimum of clothing and shoes.

I get as many groceries as I can from a local farm, including meat (grass-fed) and eggs (free-range). When in the grocery store, I try to buy local and avoid strawberries shipped from Chile in February. When there's no local product, I choose the organic one. All of this is pretty well ineffective as well for various complicated reasons, but I feel better doing it. I also raise a bit of food on the back deck (organically), almost equivalent to one whole snack!

I research companies so I can avoid buying slave-produced or sweatshop-produced items wherever possible; and regardless, I write letters to the companies expressing my earnest desire that I'm not complicit in any egregious human rights violations. Though I probably am, I want them to know that their consumers care. I buy gas from Sunoco whenever possible because their gasoline has the lowest level of polluting compounds (at least, in Ontario), and avoid Esso and PetroCan for their high sulfur levels and Shell for their atrocious human rights record in Nigeria.

I conserve water and electricity whenever possible, including using compact flourescent lights, LED lights and a rain barrel for garden and lawn watering.

I don't shop at Wal-Mart (not practical for everyone).

I purchase Ethical Funds for my retirement savings. I am not sure how different these are from regular mutual funds, but again, it's a salve to the conscience. At least I can pretend that my investing is not diametrically opposed to my political and social values.

I try to raise Frances to be aware and respectful of the non-built environment and, as she gets older and such conversations become more appropriate, I want her to be aware too of the vast global inequalities that make our comfortable lifestyles possible, and the -isms that are used to justify it.

I donate five per cent of my after-tax income to the following groups: Unicef Canada, Evergreen, Sierra Club, National Anti-Poverty Organization, AboutFace, Yellow Brick House, the United Way, the Ferret Aid Society (it's a long story), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and of course, Annika. I also fundraise for Annika.

I vote. I write letters to politicians. Speaking as a civil servant, they have more impact than the form replies might indicate.

I avoid derogatory language because it's kind of terrible to use a group of persons as one's yardstick of awfulness to which all the things one hates can be compared. My achilles heel is "sucks," which I use all the time even though I'm fully aware of its homophobic etymology. I'm working on that one.

And, you know, I blog too. At some point, when my child-rearing responsibilities allow, I'm going to return to commuting to work by bus and volunteer my time with local groups.

I can be a downer at parties.

Anyway, while I like to think that this tidy little list might give me the right to criticize Gloria Steinem whenever I damned well feel like it, it terms of global social justice principles, it reduces my eight hectares down to maybe six. One of the hardest things for me to accept since graduating from university is that I will never, ever, ever get it down to one. That, within the context of Canadian society, getting down to one requires a massive overhaul of our urban design principles, electricity generating systems, preferred fuels, agricultural industry and global trade agreements.

(Don't you feel better now? No?)

This won't be easy. It will represent a collective abandonment of the idea that happiness is achieved by acquiring goods and accumulating them in oversized houses, that a healthy economy always grows, and that it is natural and desirable for each generation to have more money and more stuff than its predecessors.

(Surely now you feel better? No?)

I'll let you judge how likely that is.

This is why I'm an armchair anarchist: I fail to see how any sociopolitical system which invests certain members with the ability to use force against other members without penalty can possibly ever be just. As soon as you give the political power and legitimacy to one class of persons to direct and control the police or army it is inevitable, I think, that either fast or slow they will have society and its laws ordered to their own intrinsic benefit. Mind you, I'm not agitating for a revolution; mostly because it would be utterly futile, the State being so well-established already that any project to exterminate it would likely take much of human civilization along for the ride. And I realize that a society of a certain size requires legitimizing of the use of force by one class. This seems well-established, anthropologically; however, I still believe that a just and sustainable society would have to be, if not anarchic, at least radically democratic, which would require cultures and societies much, much smaller than those we have at present. A large society means that there are many people we depend on who we never see, and it's too easy to brutalize people you never see.

(Now you really want to go slit your wrists. Sorry. The depressing part is over.)

But just because abolishing the economic trophic pyramid is impossible doesn't mean we can't flatten it considerably. Is there any particular reason why a CEO has to earn three billion dollars a year while half of the world's population scrounges to buy a piece of bread? I didn't think so. Wouldn't any reasonable person be able to live at anyone's reasonable definition of luxury on one million dollars per year? And can't we take the difference and use it to ease some human suffering more profound than "my handbag is last year's model"?

Exactly.

Lions and Lionnesses of the audience, I propose that we relearn that excellent concept, "enough." "Enough" is, I suspect, truly so far behind what we are culturally conditioned to perceive as "enough" that if we ever discover it it will shock us. But let's try. Let's become comfortable with the idea that we might not get everything we want all the time. Instead of just saying that money doesn't buy happiness and the holidays aren't about gifts, let's live that way. Let's actually act as if more money, more shoes, more DVDs, more collectible knick-knacks won't make us any happier. For the good of the planet our children will inherit one day and for the good of other families and their tiny children, let's see if we can't figure out where "enough" lies and, once we have it, stop.

~~~~~

(Does it sound like I've figured this out? Sorry. It remains a work in progress--but I'm determined to get there someday.

And I could go on and on and on about how I think the worst thing that happened to the 'isms' was when we collectively decided that they were evidence of individual pathology and not societal ills, so that it became nearly impossible to have a productive conversation about them because people now react so defensively, as if they have been personally attacked, when in reality how do you live in a racist or sexist or ableist culture without internalizing those attitudes and unintentionally expressing them on occasion? I could go on about how even within our own 'enlightened' cultures you are more likely to live with chronic pollution if you are poor or not white, including how it is so much easier to site landfills and toxic waste facilities near such neighbourhoods. And a thousand other things. But I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that the problems of capitalist/consumerist western economies, the consumption of global resources and the ever-growing divides between rich and poor both domestically and internationally are deeply interlinked, and if we don't bust those links wide open, we are in deep shit.

But don't hide under a cover. Pick one small thing that you can't fail at and will help even just a little bit, and do that. Then pick another. No one becomes an olympic athlete overnight, and this is much harder than running a marathon. Jen at One plus Two and Mad Hatter are hosting a big social justice love-in/wedding to which everyone is invited, so if you're looking for something small to do that grabs you, start there and click through all the links they'll post on the weekend.)

Posted by Andrea at December 5, 2006 8:28 AM under The World

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